LUKA (The Rhythm Series, Book 2) (16 page)

“Wouldn’t miss it,” I said, backing away from her.

“Wait!” she yelled as I yanked the door open.

“What?”

“You forgot something?”

I frowned. “I don’t think so.”

“Bloody hell, Luka! Yes, you did!”

And she bounced off the couch and pulled my head down for a kiss, growling with frustration when I wouldn’t open my mouth.

“What’s wrong with you?” she complained.

“Nothing!”

“Then why don’t you want to sleep with me? It’s obvious I’m gagging for it! We’re going to be parents, for God’s sake. Everyone knows you go off sex once you have a kid—we have to get in as much shagging as we can now!”

“Sarah!” I barked. “Slow the fuck down! We’re not together! We had sex once when we were both drunk. I’m not your boyfriend.”

“But you said . . .”

“I said we’d be in it together, and we will. I’ll do everything I can to help. But we’re not a couple—we never were.”

Her lips trembled and her eyes filled with tears again.

“Don’t cry,” I begged helplessly.

“I can’t help it! I’m pregnant!” she wailed. “I know—I’m completely delusional.” And she laughed through her tears. “I just kept hoping you’d been thinking about me the way I’ve been thinking about you since I found out . . . I think I convinced myself that you loved me as much as I love y—.”

She coughed again as my gut twisted with guilt.

“I didn’t mean to say that. I’m sorry . . . but . . . do you still like me after all of this?”

“Of course I like you,
buča
.”

“Then why don’t you want to be with me?” she hiccupped, tears tracking down her cheeks.

I’m in love with your brother.

I blew out a breath. “We’re just friends, Sarah, and . . .”

“We could be so much more. Just give it a chance, Luka. Please! For the sake of our baby.”

That hit me with the force of a freight train:
our baby.
And I paused.

Could I? Could I be what she needed, what she wanted? Maybe this was a chance to turn my life around, grow some roots. But where did Seth fit in? The truth was, he didn’t. If I was going to pretend to play happy families, there was no room for sexy times with Uncle Seth.

The thought made me sick. I couldn’t do it.

I loved Sarah.

But I was in love with Seth.

I loved Sarah . . . as a friend.

I looked up as she blew her nose noisily.

“Look, I know it’s been a shock,” she sniffed, “but we’d be great together. You said you don’t have a girlfriend, so . . . just think about it, okay?”

And she smiled at me, her eyes red and her cheeks blotchy. Her hands shook as she folded her arms around her knees.

“Sure,” I said, forcing a smile.

Then I left.

My head was spinning and I felt a cold sense of dread in the pit of my stomach, fighting against the fluttering hope of a different future. No way was I ready to be a father. But it seemed as if the Universe had other ideas.

Maybe I am ready.

One thing was certain: the timing sucked. Just when I’d met someone I could be happy with—someone I could love, and who loved me. Now one drunken fuck that I hadn’t even wanted in the first place was going to screw it all up. And there would be a baby—an innocent in all this fucked up mess.

Sarah:
my friend.

Seth:
my lover
.

Sarah:
my friend and lover.

Seth:
my lover and friend
.

Seth and Sarah:
brother and sister.

God, it was so fucked up. And I was the biggest fuck-up of all.

I needed to speak to Seth. I needed to see him, even if it meant he wanted to beat the crap out of me. The way I was feeling, I’d probably let him.

I caught a bus into the city, climbing onto the top deck and staring down at the people strolling along the sidewalk below. Had their lives done a one-eighty today? Had they gone from being happy to being royally fucked? I couldn’t tell, and I didn’t think anyone looking at me could tell that I was ready to punch the first fucker who got in my face. Anyone who even smiled wrong.

I sent Seth a text to say that I was outside his building, begging him to talk to me. But I didn’t get a reply.

After ten minutes of hanging around feeling the anxiety grow, I walked into the vast lobby.

Whenever I’d meet Seth for lunch, I waited at the pub around the corner, and we didn’t touch or hold hands in case his colleagues saw him.

Walking into this palace of banking would have been intimidating if my mind wasn’t already splintering into a thousand pieces.

The receptionist assessed me coolly. I looked out of place in my shorts and t-shirt.

“I’ll see if Mr. Lintort is available,” she said.

There was a short conversation as her eyes flickered to me, and then she smiled politely.

“He’ll be right down.”

I returned a thin smile and sat in one of the plush chairs ringing the lobby. I scanned the glossy magazines, all to do with international finance, and sighed.

Even in the cool of the air conditioning, my palms were sweating, and I couldn’t decide what to say to Seth. Everything I thought of sounded pathetic, like I’d deliberately lied to him. My sin of omission had caught up with me.

I couldn’t read his face when he stepped off the elevator, and that by itself was a bad omen. I could
always
tell what Seth was thinking—he was the most open person I’d ever met.

But not today.

He gave the receptionist a warm smile. “Thank you, Mrs. Martin.”

She beamed at him. “You’re welcome, sir.”

Seth nodded at me, and I followed him out of the building. He didn’t speak.

I licked my lips.

“Can we talk?”

“Congratulations,” he said, his voice as cold as a stranger’s.

“Seth, please. I . . .”

“Was this just some sort of sick game to you?” he snarled between gritted teeth.

“Of course not! I found out five minutes before you. It’s just as much as a shock to me.”

“Oh, I doubt that very much,” he spat. “I really do. Since it’s complete news to me that you had an affair
with
my sister!
”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“This should be good,” he muttered, crossing his arms.

We were in the middle of the sidewalk, and irritated pedestrians were trying to dodge around us.

“Can we go get a coffee, sit down and talk? Please, Seth.”

For a moment, I thought he was going to say no, but then he nodded curtly and pointed across the busy road to a tiny hole-in-the-wall coffee shop.

There was a single plastic table outside with folding chairs. I bought two coffees and handed one to Seth.

“It happened once,” I said quietly, barely raising my voice above the noise of street traffic. “It was the last night of the tour and we were having a wrap party. We were all drunk, but Sarah was totally wasted and throwing up. I got her a taxi, but she couldn’t tell the driver her address. He was refusing to take her, so I brought her back to my hotel room.”

Seth’s face was grim.

I bowed my head and plowed on.

“I took off her jeans and shoes and we went to bed. To sleep.”

I took a deep breath, wary of how to explain what happened next.

“I woke up and she . . . Sarah was . . . I was hard. She climbed on top of me. I asked her what she was doing, and she said something like, ‘I’ll make it good. I’ve been wanting to do this for ages’.”

God, that sounded bad.

“So my little sister who weighs about half what you do, you’re saying she raped you?”

Seth’s cold look had turned glacial.

“Fuck, no! But I didn’t want . . . I wasn’t expecting her . . . I’d always told her that I don’t sleep with people I work with! And I don’t!”

“The fact that she’s pregnant tells me you’re a fucking liar!”

I dragged my hands through my hair.

“I’m not blaming her. I’m not blaming anyone except myself. I should have said no. I was drunk, too. It was
one
time. When I woke up in the morning, she’d already gone. I didn’t see her again until today. She means noth—she’s my friend, but I want
you
.”

His gaze softened for a moment, then I saw the shields go up again.

“What are you going to do?”

I stared down at my hands.

“She wants to keep the baby. I’ll support her however I can. I’ll make good money when we start touring
again . . .”

“So, basically, you’re saying you’ll send her some money every now and again.”

“I . . .”

He leaned back in his seat, a disgusted look on his face.

“You’re just going to leave her to bring up the baby by herself?”

“What the fuck do you want me to do?” I yelled. “Tell me what to do! Tell me how to fix this and I will!”

He was silent.

“You could marry her.”

All the air left my lungs and I stared at him. My chest tightened as if I’d been slammed against a seatbelt in a car that was crashing at 100 miles an hour.

“
What?
”

“You’re friends. You care about her.”

“There’s a big difference between liking someone,” I whispered, my voice all but inaudible, “and marrying them. I can’t believe you’d . . .”

“She loves you, Luka,” he said, his voice defeated. “I could hear it when she rang me. She was so happy. She thinks she can make this work with you. I won’t stand in her way. She’s my sister.”

When I spoke, my voice was even more choked. “What about us?”

He shook his head, the hard look back. “There is no us. Not anymore.”

“But . . .”

“No! She can never know that we . . . she can’t know.”

I sat back and stared at him.

“You want me to pretend . . . ?”

He shook his head, staring at his untouched coffee.

“No, I want it to be real for her—and for you. You have to make this work, Luka. Not just for Sarah, but for my whole family.”

“You can’t ask me to do that!”

He shrugged and stared off into the distance.

“That’s up to you.” Then he met my gaze, trying to be cool, but I saw the pain burning inside. “We’re finished, Luka.”

His voice dropped like a stone and he stood up to leave.

I hung my head. “Guess I’ll see you at lunch.”

“No, you won’t. I’ll cancel. Sarah will be furious, but better that than . . .”

He didn’t finish the sentence, instead walking away.

“Seth!”

He turned to look at me, intense sadness written on his mobile face.

“Do you love me?” I whispered. “Because I . . .”

Anger flooded his whole body, his eyes dark and furious.

“You can’t ask me that. You can’t
say
that. Ever.”

“You’re asking me to choose!” I yelled at him. “How the fuck can I choose between my child and . . .”

“And what? Just what am I to you, Luka?”

I swallowed and grabbed his hand.

“My soulmate.”

I thought for a second that I’d gotten through to him, but then his lip rose in a sneer.

“Life just got fucking real, didn’t it? You need to grow the fuck up.”

He strode across the street, and this time he didn’t look back.

My last shred of hope was torn away.

I stood up slowly, watching him disappear into his office building. I waited, hoping he’d realize this was all a mistake. I counted to 299 before I gave up. He wasn’t coming.

The weight of his silence crushed the air from my lungs.

I CAN COUNT
on one hand the number of times I’ve cried in my life:

The day I realized I was gay.

The first time my mother hit me.

The day I realized I wasn’t gay.

And today. Right now.

The pain was so intense, it eclipsed everything except one word that spun around and around in my head:
Soulmate.

I didn’t want to go back to the apartment, to Sarah, but we needed to find a way through this, because it wasn’t about me, or Sarah, or Seth anymore: it was about a child.

My child.

I wanted to do the right thing, but I had no idea what it was.

I did know that I needed more time before I saw Sarah again, so I texted her with an excuse that I was held up at the theater and I’d meet her at the restaurant. I didn’t think I’d be able to eat anything.

So I walked.

You see a lot more of a city when you travel through it on foot. You see the people who live there, not just the shops or theaters or tourist attractions. There are communities within the city, just like any small town. Except the ones in London were made up of Greeks or Lebanese or Syrians. Petticoat Lane, famed for its market, was half Cockney Londoners, half Pakistani. You could walk from Marble Arch and Old World history, up to the Euston road where the shop signs were written in Arabic.

You could walk around Buckingham Palace, and if the Queen was in residence, they’d fly the flag. I liked that.

But today, all of those people, all of that life passed me by in a fog of despair. Everything I’d known was now uncertain, and in all the craziness, a new life had been created.

I’m going to be a father
.

I tried to phone Ash, but his cell went to voicemail and I remembered it was only 6AM in Chicago.